Deep Dark Chocolate Yogurt Zucchuni Cake

At the Gilmore Park Church Community Kitchen, Minoo made a cake with a portion of the huge zucchini from her CSA box.

This Deep Dark Chocolate Yogurt Zucchini Cake is moist and healthy. This will be great for kids lunch box or after school snacks. A great recipe to sneak in vegetables for fussy kids.

Minoo also shared with us the benefits of zucchini in the above excerpt. You can click on the scanned document to have a larger view.

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, at room temperature

1/4 cup canola or other mild vegetable oil

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour

3/4 cup cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup plain yogurt or sour cream

2 cups grated unpeeled zucchini

3/4 cup chopped walnuts

Source: this recipe is adapted from Dinner with Julie

Serves 16

Instructions

Preheat oven to 325F.

Grate zucchini and squeeze out excess liquid. Set aside.

In a large bowl, beat butter, oil and sugar on high speed with an electric mixer for 2 to 3 minutes, until thick and pale yellow.

Beat in the eggs.

Add vanilla.

The batter should be thick and smooth.

In a smaller bowl, stir together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Minoo demonstrated to a new member on how to measure dry ingredients properly, i.e. ladle the dry ingredients into the measuring cup using a spoon and level off excess without compacting the dry ingredients.

Add a third of the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and fold with a spatula until blended.

Add half of the yogurt and fold until blended.

Repeat with another third of the flour mixture, the rest of the yogurt, and the rest of the flour mixture.

Stir in zucchini and nuts.

Pour the thick batter into a parchment lined baking pan, distribute the batter evenly and smooth the top with a spatula.

Bake in a preheated 325F oven for an hour, until the top is cracked and springy to the touch. Let cool for bit before slicing into squares. Serves warm.